Not Another Ryzen Pun

Is AMD finally back in the game with their Ryzen CPUs? With us in our test lab at CHIP is the AMD Ryzen 1700X, surrounded by gizmos, gadgets, and hardware prepared to test its mettle. The CPU, like its brethren, is built upon the Zen microarchitecture, providing greater performance and efficiency than its predecessors.

The Ryzen 1700X is one heck of a processor, it starts off with a base clock of 3.4GHz and is capable of a boost clock of 3.8GHz. Together with AMD’s new Ryzen Master software, all unlocked Ryzen chips are made easy to overclock with just a bit of knowledge. Within a few minutes we were able to achieve a stable clock of 3.8GHz across all 8 cores. Getting it to hit 3.9GHz took a bit more time with us messing around with voltages until we hit 1.4v.

On paper the 1700X is supposed to hit 3.9GHz with XFR (eXtended Frequency Range), what XFR does is it increases processor voltage and clock speeds even higher if it detects that there is enough “heat head-room”. We weren’t able to push it into using XFR with our initial tests, so we’ll keep on trying to get it to kick in with more time. It is noted at the time of writing, AMD has a temperature offset of 20° Celsius when it comes to temperature detection.

This means that 20° Celsius is ‘added’ on top of the temperature reading. This is said to allow the chip to keep a consistent fan policy for cooling purposes. But we’ll probably see monitoring software adapt and update to this offset soon, if not already. On the topic of temperature, while overclocked to a stable 3.9GHz at 1.4v, idle temp stayed around 30-33° Celsius, but it can go up to 70° Celsius during benchmarks and stress tests. Regular benchmarks and stress tests kept us at about 60-65° Celsius on air-cooling, but we believe lower temperatures are definitely possible on water-cooling.

Performance wise, Cinebench gave scores of average 1650 when clocked at 3.8GHz and 1685 at 3.9GHz. We detected no bottleneck or throttling that would stem from the processor, having tested it with games like Witcher 3, Overwatch, and Rainbow Six Siege.

CHIP CONCLUDE: A great processor to get for gaming and/or to start your journey into overclocking.